Unhappy Max Verstappen believes Red Bull has "a lot of work to do to match Mercedes"

Red Bull

Unhappy Verstappen believes Red Bull has "a lot of work to do to match Mercedes"

RB16 lacking balance and predictability

Ian Parkes

Friday 17 July 2020 17:55 Updated: 18:09

Red Bull duo Max Verstappen and Alex Albon were both left bemoaning the feel of their car following a troubled day of practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

In dry conditions in FP1 at the Hungaroring, Verstappen finished 1.5secs adrift of pacesetter Lewis Hamilton, with the Dutch driver's best lap set on the soft-compound tyre compared to the hard on the Mercedes for the six-time Formula 1 champion.

Albon, meanwhile, was a further three-tenths of a second adrift in 13th position, with his time again on the soft Pirellis.

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Come FP2, and with the team needing to further evaluate the RB16, their work was undermined by the wet weather that dominated, leaving Verstappen to set only one timed lap right at the end of the session, while Albon completed just three installation laps.

Assessing the day overall, Verstappen said: "Not so good. Plenty to look into.

"A little bit of a shame it was raining in the second practice otherwise we could have had a look, but yeah, a lot of work to do to match Mercedes.

"[I'm] Not so happy, but luckily we have a night to look at it and make some changes and try to do better tomorrow."

Verstappen cited the fact his car was lacking "balance overall", while Albon was again frustrated by a lack of predictability.

"The weather has hurt us a little bit, just trying to understand the car a bit better," said Albon.

"Obviously FP1 wasn't ideal, and we couldn't really try anything for FP2. We'll have to look at the data a bit more in detail tonight and see what we can come up with tomorrow."

As to why he feels he car is so tricky, he replied: "Just more predictability than anything else. It's not one corner, and it's not a big margin in a specific place. It's just bits everywhere.

"The car is not quite what we want, and we just have to do some work to find out what's going on. In race two [Styrian GP] we made a big improvement, and then coming here it just hasn't followed through as nice as we expected."

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